CNN
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From his Florida beach resort, Donald Trump holds a casting call to fill the toughest job in Washington: attorney general.

Although Trump ended up on bad terms with many Cabinet members, no position was more at the center of his chaos than leading the Justice Department, where he fired one attorney general and soured on another. He also fired an FBI director and two U.S. attorneys in Manhattan who oversaw investigations related to Trump.

Some Justice Department officials worry that Trump’s return will mean a loss of the White House’s traditional independence and damage the department’s work. Current and former Justice Department officials expect that some parts of the department will eventually leave and that employees will be sidelined and forced out.

And people close to the president-elect, like conservative attorney Mark Paoletta, have issued a stark warning to career officials that they will be closely watched.

“If these career DOJ employees will not implement President Trump’s program in good faith, they should leave. The employees engaged in so-called ‘resistance’ to the legitimate agenda of the duly elected president would undermine American democracy,” Paoletta said on X on Monday.

Trump and his team have named the attorney general as the key Cabinet position if he is to deliver on his campaign promises, including immigration-related executive orders and investigations into his political enemies. The Justice Department is also charged with defending the administration’s actions in court, addressing issues ranging from health care to the environment to gun control.

“The most important person in the administration, I think, after the president for this cycle will be the attorney general,” J.D. Vance, Trump’s running mate, told ABC in October.

Justice Department officials, including Special Counsel Jack Smith, are among those on the list of possible targets for political retaliation, as are attorneys and investigators involved in Trump-related investigations and January 6 investigations, Trump and some of his supporters said.

Employees of the FBI, the center of Trump’s ire for, among other things, conducting the lawful search of his Mar-a-Lago resort during the investigation into the mishandling of classified documents, are also preparing for unrest. Trump has said he plans to fire Christopher Wray, whom he appointed in 2017 after firing his predecessor James Comey.

FBI officials and some Trump transition officials expect Wray to resign rather than wait to be fired by the new president, people briefed on the matter say. First, officials are trying to determine whether Trump plans to keep his resignation vow.

The last time Trump criticized Wray on his Truth Social platform came after a foiled assassination attempt on the former president. Trump said Wray “knows nothing” about crime in the United States, adding: “No wonder the once legendary FBI has lost America’s trust!”

Privately, Trump has been more cordial with the FBI agents he has contacted in connection with threats against him, people briefed on the matter said.

“The FBI is great. The people there, not the top people, the people, the real people, the people who work there,” he told podcaster Joe Rogan in an interview days before the election. “It’s just like the real generals I told you about who defeated ISIS in record time. The FBI guys are great. I bet I’d be 95% in the FBI.”

Adding to concerns within the federal government, the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling this summer expanded a president’s legal protections in his dealings with the Justice Department.

During his first term, Trump complained that his own appointees were thwarting his push for investigations into political rivals — including former President Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden.

“The handcuffs are coming off now,” said a Justice official.

Two other officials told CNN that there was particular concern among department employees who were part of high-profile investigations — the Capitol riot prosecutions and Smith’s cases. These employees are concerned about the potential legal costs they will incur if Trump follows through with his “retaliation” plans.

A Justice Department official told CNN that people within the department are doing “security planning.” Another told CNN that some are considering whether to hire lawyers.

A third official told CNN that there is a “general sense of depression” among lawyers who have worked on lawsuits that some Republican lawmakers have spoken out against, saying those lawyers are concerned that their years of work will be “flushed down the drain.” .

Other officials note that Trump has always struggled to understand the department’s workings; and that the appointment of special counsels, which Trump has said he wants to pursue a Biden investigation, is not routine.

Investigations without evidence are likely to run into trouble with judges and juries, current and former officials say. It would be easier to use the department to transfer material for congressional investigations.

Trump’s first term was bookended by Justice Department lawyers refusing his orders.

In January 2017, just eleven days into his term, Acting Attorney General Sally Yates, an Obama appointee, ordered department lawyers to quash Trump’s executive order that banned entry into the US for citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries to defend. Trump immediately fired Yates.

In January 2021, three days before Trump supporters attacked the US Capitol and days before he left office, Trump-appointed attorneys at the department threatened to resign en masse if he appointed as attorney general a loyalist willing to use to support his government. false claims of stolen elections. Trump withdrew.

In the intervening years, there have been a series of episodes in which Trump lashed out at his attorneys general.

Jeff Sessions, an early Trump ally as a senator from Alabama, quickly earned his ire in early 2017 when he recused himself from the investigation into Trump’s 2016 campaign and ties to Russia. Trump also demanded that the Justice Department investigate Hillary Clinton, who was the subject of “lock her up” chants during the 2016 campaign.

“Attorney General Jeff Sessions has taken a VERY weak position on Hillary Clinton’s crimes,” he wrote in a Twitter post in July 2017.

Sessions in November ordered a review of an earlier investigation into Clinton’s business interests and asked prosecutors to recommend whether a full investigation should be opened. Matthew Whitaker, Sessions’ then-chief of staff and now proposed by allies for Trump’s attorney general pick, sent the order to U.S. Attorney John Huber, according to records released by the department. Huber’s investigation ultimately yielded no evidence that warranted a full investigation.

Rod Rosenstein, Sessions’ deputy attorney general, also became a target of Trump’s attacks for appointing a special counsel to oversee the investigation.

Former Attorney General William Barr, who said he took the job because he felt Trump was being treated unfairly, did not fare much better.

Trump told Fox Business in 2020 that Barr should indict Obama, Biden and others over the Russia investigation.

“Unless Bill Barr charges these people with crimes, the greatest political crime in the history of our country, we will get little satisfaction. Unless I win and we just have to go – because I won’t forget. But these people need to be charged,” Trump said.

Barr’s latest split with Trump in 2020 occurred over Trump’s claims of voter fraud, which Barr said were “bullsh*t.” He resigned in December 2020 after publicly disputing Trump’s fraud claims.

Barr described his frustration with Trump in a 2022 interview with the Hoover Institution.

“No one wanted him to win more than I did, but I did not allow the criminal justice process to be turned into a political tool to help him and to carry out prosecutions as a political ploy, because loyalty, loyalty is ultimately linked to the Constitution. Loyalty is not personal political loyalty to Trump,” Barr said.

This year, Barr endorsed Trump for a second term.